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"No matter how great you were once upon a time — the years go by, and men forget,” - W. A. Phelon in Baseball Magazine in 1915. “Ross Barnes, forty years ago, was as great as Cobb or Wagner ever dared to be. Had scores been kept then as now, he would have seemed incomparably marvelous.”

"No matter how great you were once upon a time — the years go by, and men forget,” - W. A. Phelon in Baseball Magazine in 1915. “Ross Barnes, forty years ago, was as great as Cobb or Wagner ever dared to be. Had scores been kept then as now, he would have seemed incomparably marvelous.”

Comment

Bill James wrote a fascinating article about this decades ago. I'll try to see if I can find it and post some info.

Was it the one about triple crown winners in the minors who had no chance to do it in the majors? If so, Mike Marshall was in that piece. Playing for AAA Albuquerque in 1981, Marshall won the PCL triple crown with 34 HR, 137 RBI and .373 avg.

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Ron Kittle with Edmonton in the PCL in 1982: 345/442/752 for 1194 OPS with 50 homers in just 127 games. The former park in Edmonton was a fair park not favoring hitters or pitchers.

Gorman Thomas with Sacramento in the PCL in 1974 hit 51 homers in 138 games with a slash of 297/413/656 fpr a 1069 OPS.

Gary Redus with Billings in the good ole Pioneer League in 1978 had a slash line of 462/559/787 with an OPS of 1346. He stole 42 bases in 48 attempts in this short season 70-game schedule league. He scored 100 runs in 68 games and hit 17 homers, as Billings played like the 1906 Cubs. I remember how excited everybody was in Nashville in 1979 when the Reds jumped him over low and high A ball to AA, but he couldn't hit his weight and was sent back to A ball.

Many past Nashville Vols in the old Southern Association had incredibly big years. The ones I can remember include.
Bob Lennon hit 64 homers one year in the mid-1950's. He batted close to .350 that year too.
Jack Harshman hit 47 homers one year and then won 23 games a couple years later.
Carl Sawatski hit 45 homers and was contending for a .400 batting average circa 1950.
Boots Poffenberger won 26 games on the infamous 1940 Nashville Vols team that was in first place every day of the season, went 101-47 with 15 of the 16 regulars making the Major Leagues within a couple years (inlcuding Johnny Sain), beat Atlanta to win the Southern Association Series, and then beat Texas League champion Houston to win the Dixie Series.

Then, there is the most impressive one at bat I have ever seen in person in 68+ years. It was 1979 at old Greer Stadium in Nashville. The Sounds were playing their arch-nemesis Memphis Chicks in the Southern League. Memphis and Nashville were tied for first on the summer night they hooked up in Nashville. Tim Raines was at bat for Memphis, and Mike Armstrong was on the hill for Nashville with really good stuff. The game was scoreless the second time through the batting order, and Raines popped up a short blooper just over the head of Sounds first basemen Rick Duncan. It should have been a single, as Duncan got to the ball quickly in foul territory after it bounced and rolled a few feet. Duncan looked at second base just to make sure Raines hadn't tried to use his speed and stretch it into a double, but Raines was already nearing second and headed to third. He beat the throw for a 100-foot triple. Armstrong got out of the jam by striking out future Major Leaguer Tim Wallach. There were three or four scouts watching, including former Red Sox catcher Birdie Tebbetts. Birdie said that he had never seen anybody from his time or that he scouted ever do what Raines had just done.

Comment

Ron Kittle with Edmonton in the PCL in 1982: 345/442/752 for 1194 OPS with 50 homers in just 127 games. The former park in Edmonton was a fair park not favoring hitters or pitchers.

Gorman Thomas with Sacramento in the PCL in 1974 hit 51 homers in 138 games with a slash of 297/413/656 fpr a 1069 OPS.

Gary Redus with Billings in the good ole Pioneer League in 1978 had a slash line of 462/559/787 with an OPS of 1346. He stole 42 bases in 48 attempts in this short season 70-game schedule league. He scored 100 runs in 68 games and hit 17 homers, as Billings played like the 1906 Cubs. I remember how excited everybody was in Nashville in 1979 when the Reds jumped him over low and high A ball to AA, but he couldn't hit his weight and was sent back to A ball.

Many past Nashville Vols in the old Southern Association had incredibly big years. The ones I can remember include.
Bob Lennon hit 64 homers one year in the mid-1950's. He batted close to .350 that year too.
Jack Harshman hit 47 homers one year and then won 23 games a couple years later.
Carl Sawatski hit 45 homers and was contending for a .400 batting average circa 1950.
Boots Poffenberger won 26 games on the infamous 1940 Nashville Vols team that was in first place every day of the season, went 101-47 with 15 of the 16 regulars making the Major Leagues within a couple years (inlcuding Johnny Sain), beat Atlanta to win the Southern Association Series, and then beat Texas League champion Houston to win the Dixie Series.

Then, there is the most impressive one at bat I have ever seen in person in 68+ years. It was 1979 at old Greer Stadium in Nashville. The Sounds were playing their arch-nemesis Memphis Chicks in the Southern League. Memphis and Nashville were tied for first on the summer night they hooked up in Nashville. Tim Raines was at bat for Memphis, and Mike Armstrong was on the hill for Nashville with really good stuff. The game was scoreless the second time through the batting order, and Raines popped up a short blooper just over the head of Sounds first basemen Rick Duncan. It should have been a single, as Duncan got to the ball quickly in foul territory after it bounced and rolled a few feet. Duncan looked at second base just to make sure Raines hadn't tried to use his speed and stretch it into a double, but Raines was already nearing second and headed to third. He beat the throw for a 100-foot triple. Armstrong got out of the jam by striking out future Major Leaguer Tim Wallach. There were three or four scouts watching, including former Red Sox catcher Birdie Tebbetts. Birdie said that he had never seen anybody from his time or that he scouted ever do what Raines had just done.

Bill James wrote a fascinating article about this decades ago. I'll try to see if I can find it and post some info.

Didn't know that.

"No matter how great you were once upon a time — the years go by, and men forget,” - W. A. Phelon in Baseball Magazine in 1915. “Ross Barnes, forty years ago, was as great as Cobb or Wagner ever dared to be. Had scores been kept then as now, he would have seemed incomparably marvelous.”

"No matter how great you were once upon a time — the years go by, and men forget,” - W. A. Phelon in Baseball Magazine in 1915. “Ross Barnes, forty years ago, was as great as Cobb or Wagner ever dared to be. Had scores been kept then as now, he would have seemed incomparably marvelous.”

Comment

I have another old Nashville Vol to add to this list. In 1957, Stan Palys hit 24 homers with a slash of 359/460/598 for an OPS of 1059. He was a right-handed batter, but you have to understand the old Sulphur Dell ballpark. It was 262 feet down the right field line with a 35-foot fence on top of an inclined hill. Nashville always looked for left-handed power hitters to take golf ball type swings to hit homers. That's why Bob Lennon hit 64 homers in one season but could only hit long fly outs for the Cubs.

Palys learned to take inside-out swings and go the other way against the abundance of left-handed pitchers other teams would save to pitch at the Dell. He hit a lot of doubles off that wall as well as about half of his homers that year. Eventually, pitchers started giving him intentional unintentional walks (wasting pitches hoping he'd swing out of the strike zone). I think he averaged more than a walk a game at home in the last two months. He never made it back to the Majors.